You may purchase this resource individually here.

 2 items:

  • Student Activity Booklet (16 pages)
  • Answers, Notes and Observations (18 pages) 

 

The step-by-step approach in the Activity Booklet will lead your students through a detailed analysis of the second piece in Pictures (“Gnome”)  starting with an understanding of the overall structure via the way Mussorgsky handles theme and key. Following on, a series of activities that explore how the different elements of music (melody, rhythm, texture and harmony) relate to the extra-musical idea behind this piece. 

Pgs.1-2 of the Student Activity Booklet contain further details of the aims and objectives that may be useful if producing a lesson plan. These two pages are essentially a “missive” about how they might approach this activity to get the most from it. If you don’t feel this appropriate for your students you can always amend/delete.  (This resource is editable.)

Two features of this resource that I would like to draw attention to with respect to skills development are:

  1. In terms of self-study how we develop the ability to work with/take something from a text that may initially seem too difficult to really engage with. We take several passages from the Mussorgsky scholar’s book  “Pictures at an Exhibition” by Michel Russ and through stepped activities that encourage your students to engage with challenging concepts we explore what Russ is telling us about the music.
  2. Throughout there is a focus on how we translate what we understand into writing about music with an emphasis on vocabulary (both specialist and otherwise). Students are encouraged in several places to write a short passage such that they would include in an essay.